Eleven validation sites will test the tool developed and contribute with their cases to implement the Demo sites.

 

LIPOR Waste-to-Energy Plant in Maia

LIPOR is participating in the SO WHAT project mainly with respect to its waste to energy (WtE) plant located in Maia, Portugal, treating 380,000 tons of waste per year.

The WtE Plant composed by high temperature gases that go through an energy recovery boiler, which uses the heat to produce steam for power poduction. In this framework, it was developed in 2017 a study concerning the assessment of the technical-economic feasibility of recovery waste heat of LIPOR’s WtE Plant and implementation of a district heating system connecting LIPOR and Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, in Oporto.

Multiple different options were considered (Additional burning of waste in the boiler, additional drawing of turbine steam in medium pressure extraction, heat recovery of the exhaust gas from the boiler) and the second one has subsequently been the subject of detailed techno-economical feasibility analysis.. (option considered: 3 absorption chillers of 4.000 kW of cooling power). Thanks to SO WHAT, LIPOR will go further in waste heat and cold WH/C valorisation investments related to Oporto Airport.

ISVAG Waste to Energy Plant in Antwerp, Belgium

ISVAG’s location, close to the city of Antwerp, Belgium, drove the company to plan the construction of a new waste-to-energy plant where the focus will be on maximising energy efficiency by additionally recovering heat for a district heating network. The incineration of the residual household waste takes place in a grate furnace.

Different studies were carried out related to the recovery of residual heat (feasibility study small scale district heating grid, feasibility study large scale district heating network, design heat recovery in the existing plant, design new waste-to-energy plant). The first step to this project is the construction of a small scale district heating network, which will be powered with heat from the existing waste-to-heat plant, while the large scale district heating network and brand new plant are foreseen to be taken into operation in 2023.

ISVAG’s role in the SO WHAT project is multiple, considering that they have already an incineration plant running and they are planning the construction of a new one in parallel to a district heating network.


Varberg Energi Pulp and Mill industry Waste Heat District Heating Network in Varberg, Sweden

The demosite in Varberg, Sweden, is represented by Varberg Energy (VEAB), which is a community-  based energy company providing district heating and other services in the area. The directive they received as company is to invest in sustainable energy resources on a local market and, following it, they identified waste heat from a pulp mill situated about 20 km from the city as a promising source to be fed into the district heating network. Before the construction of Varberg district heating network, the pulp mill was forced to cool away heat and release it into the environment.

Waste heat is the main source for the network (85%) but to integrate it and diversify and secure the network conventional heating systems based on wood chips, biogas and bio oil are available. VEAB is acting as lighthouse partner for the SO WHAT project. VEAB and the pulp mill are currently investigating the possibility to increase the amount of waste heat injected in the network through action both at heat exchanger level and at customer level (i.e. lowering the return temperature).

Furthermore, they are currently investigating the possibility to provide district cooling during summer via absorption chiller exploiting local waste heat.

Materials Processing Institute (MPI)’s Steel Industry Research Pilot Plant in Middlesbrough, UK

MPI is specialized in challenging processes, particularly those involving high temperatures, hostile environments and high specification materials. One of the main areas of expertise is in melting, alloying and casting of semi-finished product, produced at the Institute’s production facility in Middlesbrough (UK).

The Institute operates small scale Steel Industry plant including Electric Arc Furnace and Continuous Casting Plant, the used for both commercial production and research activity. Both processes involve liquid steel at temperatures around 1600°C which generate large quantities of heat at all stages in the process, and several defined cooling water streams. Clear sources of waste heat are the radiant heat (arising from the cooling of cast steel ingot, billet and slab), which is typical of steel industry worldwide, and process cooling water that is recirculated through a large holding tank. While the latter is easier to recover, the former has proven very difficult to capture due to its scale and location: these two challenges are in line with SO WHAT’s objective to analyse the heat recovery from different sources and related to different streams. MPI represents the Steel Industry in SO WHAT, having a great experience in the related activities and processes deriving both from research activities and from the actual pilot plant operation.

Göteborg Energi’s multiple waste heat and district heating and cooling networks in Gothenburg, Sweden

Göteborg Energi (GOTE) has a world-class district heating network, covering 90% of the city’s demand and where only 5% of the heat production is based on fossil fuels; the vast majority of energy production is based on excess heat (80%) originating from waste incineration, oil refining and electricity production, and biofuels (15%). The waste is coming from Refinery ST1, PREEM and waste incineration (Renova), as GOTE has used waste heat for district heating since the 1970’s. GOTE is offering district cooling to the network based on absorption chillers driven by waste heat from industries which in summer months could not be exploited due to low heat demand. In parallel, free-cooling (cooling towers or river water) and compressors are employed to offer a reliable service. GOTE is acting as lighthouse partner for the SO WHAT project, but it also benefits from it for its next development forecasted activities:

  1. By 2021, they will need to expand cooling production by another 20 MW to meet the sales forecast. The demo will be under investigation and today they are looking at two types of absorption machines.
  2. They also look at utilizing low temperature heat for district heating networks (i.e. server halls, data test cells, etc.).

Renovation of RADET District Heating Network in Constanta, Romania

RADET Constanta, established in 1991, is the District Heating Company of the municipality of Constanta, Romania, ensuring 70% of the urban heating demand of 170,000 inhabitants.

At the current state, RADET does not employ waste heat in its district heating network but thanks to the SO WHAT project it aims at injecting heat from neighboring industries (petrochemical, manufacturing etc.) to become less fossil fuel dependent and to promote new business models. In this framework, the project will also promote the knowledge transfer from the world class district heating and waste heat recovery from the Swedish cluster to less advanced system in EU, becoming front-runner for Eastern Europe district heating networks renovation thanks to waste heat valorization.

UMICORE Rare Material recycling and production centre in Olen, Belgium

UMICORE is a global player in materials technology that develops technologies and produces/recycles materials for high-grade solar cells, rechargeable batteries, LED applications and catalytic converters.).

The UMICORE plant is close to the current heat users on the Olen Campus site, which are all supplied with steam generated in two Cogen turbines (12.8 MWe) and multiple steam boilers.

A pre-feasibility study is ongoing to integrate a campus-wide heat network. This would enable the valorization of multiple sources of waste heat, to share them with neighboring companies, and possibly even up to the city of Herentals, and/or to integrate new sources of renewable heat (e.g. deep geothermal energy). The already identified sources of waste heat derives from processes as hydrogenation (approx. 212 TJ/year easily accessible) and pyrogenation (approx. 39GWh/year) but other exothermic reactions could be a viable source of waste heat. These opportunities will be studied thanks to KELVIN Solutions’ support.

IMERYS carbon black and graphite manufacturing centre in Willebroek, Belgium

IMERYS Graphite & Carbon is the world leader in high-tech, high performance solutions based on specialized graphite and carbons. IMERYS is situated on the industrial site of Willebroek Noord and in the direct vicinity of the industrial site of Puurs Pulaar and the municipality of Willebroek with its own residential development projects. This offers an opportunity to valorise IMERYS waste heat to industrial consumers, public buildings and residential consumers. Considering the fact that today almost no heat is recovered, a district heating network would make the site significantly more sustainable and futureproof. As a matter of fact, during the process of Carbon Black, a mixture of H2 and CO is formed, which is currently burned in a furnace and no heat is recovered of the max total of 30MW.

The production is 24/7, creating a continuous flow of waste heat at about 600°C, available from the chimney gasses of the furnaces. In order to valorise the waste gas stream, a study has been performed looking into different industrial options ranging from electricity production, over carbon valorisation via the production of chemicals such as methanol or paraffines, as well as heating circuits. This study will be used in SO WHAT as a benchmark for what it concerns both the techno-economic solution proposed and the necessary time and effort under KELVIN Solutions’ supervision.

Martini & Rossi’s Distillery in Pessione, Italy

In Martini & Rossi’s (M&R) Pessione industrial site all the products of company are produced: Martini, sparkling wines and liquors, following their recipes. M&R demosite has been identified as particularly relevant for the SO WHAT project as the stabilization of sparkling wines requires low temperatures, which are achieved via glycol-based refrigerators.

The overall cooling production is of about 10GWh/year employed in different areas of the plant: considering the remarkable amount of low temperature fluids related to this production M&R is interested in analyzing the possibility and potential benefits related to waste cold recovery. As a consequence of the refrigerating power, in the plant it is produced a large amount of low temperature waste heat which is cooled in evaporative condensers and it accounts for about 15GWh/year and which potential has already been identified as interesting. Moreover, another waste heat stream has been identified in the cooling circuit of air compressors, which is currently cooled in an evaporative tower but it could be otherwise employed for about 170MWh/year. Finally, M&R is committed in employing Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and the installation of solar thermal panels for process purposes is planned in the framework of SHIP2FAIR H2020 project: for the present reason, M&R is an optimal test case for the analysis of RES integration and its direct impact on the production.

ENCE Pulp Mill in Navia, Spain

ENCE is the leading company in Europe in eucalyptus pulp production. The biofactories in Navia (Asturias) and Pontevedra have a total high-quality eucalyptus pulp production capacity of 1,200,000 tons/year. Moreover, ENCE is Spain’s leading producer of renewable energy using biomass.

In 2018 ENCE Pontevedra generated more than 232 GWh of energy through two backpressure turbines that use biomass derived from trees in the pulp production process. The installed capacity of ENCE Pontevedra biofactory for renewable biomass power generation is 35 MW.

ENCE Navia generated around 519 GWh of renewable energy in the same year. After its expansion, ten years ago, THE ENCE Navia biofactory has doubled its power generation capacity, reaching an installed capacity of 77 MW through a backpressure turbine (for lignin) and a condensation turbine (for forest waste biomass).

ENCE’s pulp biofactories have a technology that allows them to be self-sufficient in terms of energy, using renewable resources. The biomass dryer in Navia is actually working with heat recovered from the bleaching stage. In the framework of the SO WHAT Project, the heat from the bleaching stage and the effluent treatment stage will be analyzed in order to use it for the heating of the hospital and the town hall of Navia..

ROMPETROL Refinery in Petromidia of Navodari, Romania

Rompetrol Rafinare is the largest asset held by the KMG International Group in Romania. The three production facilities of Rompetrol Rafinare operate under an integrated system, in full synergy, by offering a wide range of products. Thus, Petromidia Refinery is one of the most complex refineries, which supplies the entire feedstock for the Polypropylene plant within the Petrochemical Division; it is the sole Romanian producer of polyolefins. The refineries produce a relevant amount of waste heat. Two main areas of interest have been identified in the framework of the SO WHAT project: two furnaces which discharge heat at 550°C and the amine gas treating unit at 140°C. In addition, a project to recover amine treatment waste heat is under development and will be studied thanks to MEDGREEN.